The Toronto Raptors Are Dead to Stephen Colbert

That was last night's edition of The Colbert Report where comedian/my personal hero Stephen Colbert ripped into the Raptors mascot for upstaging his poor little, adorable Steagle Cobeagle the Eagle for winning a random award. As Stephen mentioned in his little rant, the website GameOps.com awarded our jurassic friend enemy the Best Mascot of 2006:

If you want to see a creative, energetic and passionate mascot you are looking for the Raptor. Toronto's NBA mascots also brings more variety than anyone in the mascot business. As many struggling franchises find, having a reliably entertaining and popular mascot can help soothe the pain of a team that may not be as dependable.

Now now, Toronto contingents, no need to barge full force into the Contacts Us page of GameOps and remind them of the Raps current 4th spot in the East just yet (though personally I'd like to speak to their Finance Manager ... ) Let's remember that this was one of those arbitrary end-of-year type of awards that no one knew a thing about, let know care, except well, for Stephen Colbert. But seriously, it's almost March and we're talking about 2006.

To save you precious minutes of your time, other notable NBA-related winners included Chicago Bulls' Inflat-a-Bull Races for Best Contest and the Cleveland Cavaliers' Brazilian Carnival Night for Best Game Promotion that somehow beat out K-Fed Night. I'm going to call a recount for that one, if you don't mind.